Chapter Seven - Snowfall at the Severed Path
781 Words
Snow began to fall over Southern Citadel, blanketing the path from the gates of the General’s Manor to the abandoned shrine at the far edge of the village. It was there, years ago, that Trạm Dư’s mother was found hanging in the dead of night. People said she died out of shame—
But Trạm Dư knew… it was never so simple.
He had once come to that shrine and knelt for three days and three nights beneath the cold altar, not uttering a single word of complaint.
Back then, it was just him and a silk handkerchief stained with dried blood—
The very cloth his mother had tied to her wrist before she died.
And now, at that same shrine, Trạm Dư met again with Lý Dực Chương—a man who had once served as a close aide to Nhược Mai’s father.
“Why… are you only speaking now?” Trạm Dư’s voice was hoarse and cold.
Lý Dực Chương trembled, eyes fixed on the ground:
“I was afraid… Afraid the two of you would end up just like your mothers. One dying in silence, the other driven mad by despair…”
“Who was it… that forced my mother to die?”
Lý Dực Chương bit his lip, then whispered:
“It was the Lục clan.”
Meanwhile, inside the General’s Manor, a formal indictment had just arrived from the Capital.
Its contents: Lục Tô Yến was under investigation for conspiring with external factions to harm the household’s eldest daughter.
The General, in a fury, flung the document to the ground.
But as he turned, he saw Nhược Mai already standing there.
She neither knelt nor bowed.
“Father,” she said, “there is no need to read further. The handwriting in that report… is mine.”
The entire great hall fell silent.
Lục Tô Yến had just stepped in. Hearing those words, she clenched her fists. Blood surged to her eyes.
“So you want me dead again, is that it?”
“It’s not I,” Nhược Mai replied, calm as ever. “You brought yourself there.”
Tô Yến laughed, wild and bitter:
“Because they all loved you. Because they always chose you.
Because they always compared me to you!”
“From the time we were little, was there ever anything I had… that you hadn’t first turned away?”
She turned to their father—the once-mighty General—whose face was now pale as snow.
“Even your gaze… has never lingered on me for more than a breath.”
No one argued with her.
Because every word was heartbreakingly true.
That night, the General’s Manor sealed its doors once again.
Tô Yến was placed under house arrest.
But before midnight… she fled.
The one who helped her escape—
Was Trình Diệc Thanh.
In the western pine forest, snow fell deep—knee-high and still rising.
Tô Yến stood motionless, staring at the frozen lake.
In her hand was a silver hairpin—the last thing her mother had left behind.
“I have no intention of living anymore,” she said softly. “No one needs me to live.”
Behind her, Diệc Thanh stood silent for a long while, before finally speaking:
“I do.”
That one sentence—
And Tô Yến trembled from head to toe.
“Don’t… pity me.”
“I don’t pity you,” Diệc Thanh said gently.
“I love you."
Back at the manor, Nhược Mai stood beneath the corridor’s eaves, holding a portrait of her mother—a woman with eyes that smiled and lips always gentle.
“Mother,” she whispered,
“Did I do the right thing?”
Behind her, Trạm Dư stood. She didn’t know when he had arrived.
He said nothing. But when she turned around, he slowly knelt.
Not to beg.
But to… return a memory long buried.
A scroll of old parchment, bearing her mother’s handwriting.
“The one who gave the order to execute my mother,” Trạm Dư said, each word sharp as blades through snow-laden wind,
“was your father.”
“And the one who handed her the poisoned wine…
was the same man who did so to your mother.”
Nhược Mai stood frozen, as if turned to stone.
From beginning to end…
Everything was a cycle of blood and vengeance.
At chapter’s end, Trạm Dư looked up at her, his eyes dark with pain:
“What will you do now?”
“Will you kill your father… to avenge your mother?”
“Or kill me…
for being the one who unearthed it all?”
- Writer
